In 1978 Israel was in the midst of intense peace negotiations with Egypt. In 1979 Israel and Egypt just signed the peace treaty. In 1999 a left-leaning prime minister was just elected and there were no notable attacks on Palestinians by Israel. In 2018 we have a PM and government who's strongly against Palestine, the US is actively promoting its relationship with Israel at the expense of Palestinian lives, and dozens of Palestinians were killed by IDF in the biggest attack in a decade.

Israel is not in a great situation, politically.

As for Jerusalem hosting it - well, it's considered an honor, and a city whose population and leadership consistently ignore or actively deride the spirit of Eurovision and its fans, maybe it shouldn't host it this year.

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

"Solar freakin' roadways" was bullshit from the start. There have been other small scale trials of more sensible concepts on low-trafficked roads, but the fundamental point remains that whatever solar tech you have, it's better on a roof than on a road.

I still think it's a stupid idea. A solar panel isn't placed flat on the ground, it's placed at an angle to get maximum sunlight. A solar panel is also a rather delicate piece of machinery that, even if it can handle the direct vertical force of several tons of truck and car, isn't going to able to handle the horizontal forces of cars braking and accelerating on top of it. It'd be much cheaper to put the panels right next to the road instead. Hell, it'd be better to place the panels on stilts above the road. These initiatives resemble a photo-op and propaganda more than anything else. China has a lot of desert; cover that in panels first, use high voltage DC to transport the electricity hundreds of miles with almost no transmission losses, and call it a day.

BBC News wrote:A town has celebrated becoming "plastic-free" - by unveiling a giant plastic banner.The flag sits pride of place in the centre of Chepstow in Monmouthshire after the honour from environmental group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS).But the banner over the 13th Century archway has been described as "beyond irony" from its former mayor, who wants the local town council to take it down.

Quite the irony. Apparently they considered cotton, but decided plastic was better as it is more "hard-wearing". The article goes on to state that "plastic-free" means the town is against single-use plastics rather plastics in general. All that remains is whether or not the banner counts as single-use; it's not exactly going to be re-used, but it does have a longer (intended) lifespan than throw-away packaging. Hmm.

"Solar freakin' roadways" was bullshit from the start. There have been other small scale trials of more sensible concepts on low-trafficked roads, but the fundamental point remains that whatever solar tech you have, it's better on a roof than on a road.

Hey, if Mao could turn farms into steel mills, surely Xi can turn roads into roofs!

"'Legacy code' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrupwww.commodorejohn.com - in case you were wondering, which you probably weren't.

CorruptUser wrote:The Republic Formerly Known as Macedonia is to be renamed Republic of North Macedonia.

Istanbul, not Constantinople, long time ago, was Contantinople...

Don't you mean "the republic formerly known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia"?

At one point didn't the trope-namer change his name back? I vaguely remember him being introduced as "The artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince; formerly known as Prince: Prince!"

The solar roads initiative has one huge potential advantage that keeps it going and going and going, like the Energizer Bunny. That idea is government dollars for massive Highway projects. It doesn't have to be smart to be a good boondoggle for extracting them tax dollars.

ETA I mean, really, this is a bad idea. Who seriously thought solar panels would perform well that would not be facing the Sun directly and would also spend 75% of their time covered by the usual traffic jam?

Someone who thinks solar panels can be manufactured as cheap as paper? I mean, if a solar panel was only $10 per sq meter, then even covering the interior walls of your home in panels could make economic sense.

I mean, if that were the case, I would put them literally everywhere else first.

Even the roof of a car makes rather more sense than the road, I think. Roof of a house is easiest, exterior walls, roofs of vehicles, basically anywhere with an appropriate surface that isn't much traversed beats out a place that is.

ColletArrow wrote:The article goes on to state that "plastic-free" means the town is against single-use plastics rather plastics in general. All that remains is whether or not the banner counts as single-use; it's not exactly going to be re-used, but it does have a longer (intended) lifespan than throw-away packaging. Hmm.

Since your post, I've been pondering (to nobody's advantage, even mine, but I have so I might as well tell you what I have pondered) and decided that "Single Use Plastic" is definitely the wrong term. Right now I'm on a park bench, looking at (or at least toward) a park rubbish bin that appears to be plasticy in its various external parts (top, sides, access door), around a metal frame and extractable bin-container. They are all single-use elements, yet should (the ravages of vandals aside) last for a long, long time. More than wood (may even be far less flammable and somewhat self-extinguishing) and maybe more than completely unprotected metal (which, let's face it, is also one of the horns of this dilemma!).

If (I haven't looked) there's a plastic bin-liner in the bin-container (for better management) it may be single-use as it gets swapped out each time it is emptied, or it may be reused as long as it remains intact enough between emptyings as the container+bag are upended and just the accumulated detritus transferred to whatever garbage-collection vehicle/trolley they use here.

I'm toying with the idea of swapping "single use" for maybe something like "transient utility". Or perhaps, in the case of packaging materials, "transit(ory) utility". It vilifies the right(/wrong) use of plastics and doesn't apply to the ones where they're actually a decent idea (like a long-term use of a banner, or the coating on a CD) so long as you then do what you can at the end of their extended life. It doesn't help classify copiously shed microfibres from artificial/part-artificial textiles, discarded nurdles and fragments of plastic from other (good) uses ending in uncontrolled fragmentation, but you can't have everything...

And now I think I should quit this park (having eaten my sandwiches, and drunk my drink) and get onto more important things. Even if they don't save the world, either.

That doesn't cover those bits of sticky-tape on printers, then, which stick to your hand so you can't dispose of them, just stick them to the other hand/the back or undeside of a handy piece of furniture.

ColletArrow wrote:The article goes on to state that "plastic-free" means the town is against single-use plastics rather plastics in general. All that remains is whether or not the banner counts as single-use; it's not exactly going to be re-used, but it does have a longer (intended) lifespan than throw-away packaging. Hmm.

Since your post, I've been pondering (to nobody's advantage, even mine, but I have so I might as well tell you what I have pondered) and decided that "Single Use Plastic" is definitely the wrong term. Right now I'm on a park bench, looking at (or at least toward) a park rubbish bin that appears to be plasticy in its various external parts (top, sides, access door), around a metal frame and extractable bin-container. They are all single-use elements, yet should (the ravages of vandals aside) last for a long, long time. More than wood (may even be far less flammable and somewhat self-extinguishing) and maybe more than completely unprotected metal (which, let's face it, is also one of the horns of this dilemma!).

If (I haven't looked) there's a plastic bin-liner in the bin-container (for better management) it may be single-use as it gets swapped out each time it is emptied, or it may be reused as long as it remains intact enough between emptyings as the container+bag are upended and just the accumulated detritus transferred to whatever garbage-collection vehicle/trolley they use here.

A banner commemorating a single event seems, to me at least, to be significantly more impermanent than a dumpster. More than the plastic bag perhaps, but not a great deal more. The plastic bag's probably gonna be used for at least a week, maybe a few weeks, depending on exact garbage handling schedule, the banner likely isn't intended to be used for multiple events, and will probably start to look pretty rough after a bit of exposure. I'd imagine they'd toss it at some point during the summer.

Anyways, disposable plastic isn't inherently bad. Garbage bags use a fairly modest amount of plastic, and few practical substitutes come to mind. A paper bag offers significant disadvantages over plastic, for instance. Using no bag at all results in significant labor to clean disgusting trash out of bins, and probably a fair bit of water. Sure, reducing trash overall(and thus bag usage) is definitely good, and recycled plastic in bags is good, but abandoning single use plastic bags altogether may not be a net improvement.

This large plastic banner product is build to last, to withstand the weather and be used for years to come at our events.

That's the people who awarded the honour. Who looked into other alternatives and even made up a canvas one for use on their stall "when it was dry", implying that this less plastic one wouldn't stand up to the same lifetime punishment of being deployed out in all possible weathers for indefinitely numerous future instances like the plastic one will.

(Howeverso reasoned, imma gonna take their word for it, them being the awarders.)

I recall something in a New Scientist in the late '80s about a tuned-degradable plastic made out of handily bio-friendly monomers that might be used to hold' strips' of seeds. Laid into the soil, it would protect them against too much and too little water at colder temperatures. But once a suitable soil-temperature arrived, it'd dissolve away (ideally with useful by-products, but you could also interspace seeds with nutrient-rich stuff, released at just the time to dope the soil around the seed) and so the growing season starts.

I don't know if anyone actually got that to market. It probably was never quite so doable as to outcompete the 'old fashioned' way of planting and caring for crops when the farmer already does.